Druids .. just how did you level?

[Frojax]

I'm working on a druid team for the second time now, I deleted the first lot in a rage. But this time I am determined to get them up there.

The question is, what's the best way to do it, I'm planning on a 5xBoomkin team, but wrath and moonfire don't seem very mana efficient or effective at the moment, but having messed with bear form, it's terrible. My 5xDK team is a joy to play, considering they are all melee, I figured there wouldn't be much difference for the druids, but they have problems with range and all kinds.

Also, I'm very new to druids and noticed that I only gain weapon skill when not in bear form, does this mean that forms don't take weapon skill into consideration, only the damage of the weapons used?

Thanks

[Redbeard]

Cant answer the 5x leveling, but will answer the weapon skill question. You are always assumed to have max weapon skill in bear form, yes. Feral forms do NOT take weapon damage into consideration. At some point you will get to weapons (i think they might have only made the change for level 60+ weapons but im not sure, ive been max level for too long) that have a stat called feral Attack power on them, which is based on the weapon damage. Until you see that, weapons are just stat sticks for you and you are compensated by stats inherent to the forms themselves.

Hope thats helpful.

edit: If you browse http://www.wowhead.com/?items=2.5#0-3+1 youll notice that all TBC and WOTLK 2h maces have feral attack power shown. Some of the level 60 stuff does too but some of it doesnt so at some point they start giving you that stat, dont know what the cut off is exactly.

[Frojax]

That's a huge help, thanks Redbeard.

[CommanderChaos]

After a few months experimentation, I finally fired up 4 RAF accounts about two weeks ago. My first team to 60 was 5xBoomkins (only took two weekends!!!) I didn't start using tourguide until about lvl 30 or so, but it made a huge difference. I found that if 5xStarfire didn't kill a certain level mob, then 10xWrath usually did the trick. Insect Swarm is surprisingly mana efficient, and will kill anything your level if you care to wait that long. I didn't worry about trying to keep them all in leather, just took the quest rewards that gave the best int, stam, or spellpower. I didn't replace my lvl 2 staff until the mid-50s. Mana was never a problem, except in the short time I spent in an instance at a low level. Never drank. Average with RAF is 4-5 quests per level, which stayed the same from lvl 1 all the way up to 60. This was insanely easy with RAF. Without RAF, which may be your choice since you've already got a lot of accounts, the only difference would be time.

[CommanderChaos]

More thoughts here that might be more helpful to you: When I leveled up my original solo druid, I was never willing to put cloth on him, even when he was specced balance. This resulted in an extremely disappointing boomkin experience. Balance druids need int and spell power to be remotely playable, and leather gear that provides that in proper quantity is very rare pre-BC. So dress them up as mages and they'll rock.

[Frojax]

Thanks CommanderChaos, just the info I needed. I've been picking up +int rewards, just in case and I'm on RAF, so I'll just go with balance and look forward to Boomkin form :)

Cheers

[elsegundo]

with 5 boomkin you can probably kill mobs easily enough to have cloth gear. cloth is awesome. dont be afraid to use it if it improves your stats.
i tell this to other classes as well, hunters dont need to have mail gear completely, as well as pallies dont need to have everything plate. whats important is the gear, especially when fighting ranged. i was running a holy pally through an instance and some really nice mail pants dropped. she wouldnt take it because it was mail, but i told her she's giving up 200 armor points for 15 int, 12 stam and 10 strength, plus three sockets. wtf?? i'd give up 200 armor points in a heartbeat for that. so dont be too bent on just getting leather and thats it.

if you're a dps-cat, then yes, leather is what you want. but for boomkins, if you dont want less damage, use barkskin. or use entangling roots while you nuke.
i would do one entangle roots, the four moonfire, then wrath. mob proceeds to die. easy enough? lol

[algol]

Wrath spam.

[Stealthy]

Wrath spam.

This. And as a Boomkin, you won't start seeing any decent leather gear until Outland. It will be mostly cloth until then...

The good news is your mana efficiency will jump when you get the Vengeance & Lunar Guidance talents (you'll be killing mobs in less casts) and Dreamstate (much faster mana regen).

You'll also get to the point where you can one shot non-elite mobs with 5 x Starfire...should be a cakewalk after that.

Cheers,

S.

[turbopinto]

My druids on horde and alliance, both teams are lvl 60 and I went feral to do it. The method: 1X pounce, run through target on all characters spamming mangle. No target (other than elites) lasts more than 2 hits per character. With improved leader of the pack the healing is enormous, and the trail of dead things is long. If you are having problems with an elite not dying, switch to bearform and continue the fight that way, instashift form, cast 5x rejeuvinate, and shift back. I never trained bearform on my horde toons, so that tells you how often I have problems like that.

Eventually for instances I'd go 1 bearform, 3x moonkin, and 1 resto just to try it out.

Oh yeah, and in AV when everyone rushes vann or drek, then about 15 sec into the fight, cast 5x tranquility. You will probably draw aggro and die, but almost nobody else will. Man people love watching EVERYONE get healed for rediculous amounts of health.

[Doostin]

Mine are lvl 49, for non elites i just do /castrandom Wrath, Starfire, Starfire (so i cast starfire mostly, this was for the eclipse talent later on) usually 1 starfire from each moonkin kills a non elite. for instances i have a different button

/castsequence reset=target/14 Insect Swarm, Null
/castrandom Wrath, Starfire, Starfire

and if you want your main guy you're playing to get initial aggro, i put leather on him and added Moonfire after insect swarm, null. this wastes a little mana sometimes but it pretty much guarantee's i get aggro in the beginning and can go bearform on him

i go bear on him for bosses or big pulls, and have the Maul glyph to hit 2 targets with maul.

/startattack
/cast Maul

main atatckin bear form.

all of them have a macro to heal whoever has aggro, but its on different keys for alternates so that not all 4 will kick out of boomkin form to heal, like Boomkin 2 and 3 heal when i push 7 on the keypad, and boomkin 4 and 5 heal when i hit 8 on the keypad.

the heal macro is

/assist party1
/castsequence [target=targettarget] reset=combat/15 Regrowth, Rejuvenation, Healing Touch, Healing Touch, Healing Touch

you can tweak them however but they work pretty good so far. no wipes in any instance. Deadmines, Stockades, Gnomer, SM, Uldaman. getting ready to do ZF next

[shaeman]

If i were levelling 5 druids I would probably go with a bear tank and 4 moonkins.

As others have said, equip the moonkins with cloth for the int and spellpower. The bear tank solves the issue of the mob running for the moonkin.

The closest I got was running with 2 mages and a bear tank. I would run towards the mobs, drop the slaves off follow and hit the mob with the bear a couple of times to get initial aggro. With just 2 mages the mob died fast, with 4 moonkin it will only take a couple of rounds of wrath spam.

[beyond-tec]

5 Druids
5 Moonkins
currently level 58.

in vanilla content I've picked up mage, warlock and even priest stuff.
Int + sta = good, even if it's cloth and not leather.
Usually the mob doesn't live long enough to hit my toons.

Now I'm in the BC content. Currently gearing up my crew. Cloth & Leather.
Int, Sta, mp5, spellpower. Doesn't matter - it's just questing =)

As soon as I get into the WOTLK content I'll grab
- healer gear with one druid
- tank/cat gear with one druid
- moonkin gear with the other three druids.

healer and tank will collect moonkin gear, too.

I'm waiting for dual spec so I can quest with 5 moonkins and do instances
while using the other spec. I'm really happy about the announcement that
this will get into the game.

I :love: my druids.

[Bena]

My druid team is currently 75. I'm leveling 1 bear/4 moonkins. Pre Northerend 5 insect swarms would usually kill a regular mob. In instances I usually do MF/IS/SFx3. For regular grinding IS and wrath are ok but starfire gets better mana efficiency. If you're running low on mana in instances I recommend a SF spam instead of wrath as it's more mana efficient. I didn't spec eclipse on the moonkins as it's hard to use the procs efficiently with 4 moonkins when boxing. My tank/feral casts improved fearie fire.

Most of the fights my followers stay in human form as I'm using them for heals. I'm going to try going 1 tree/3 mookins now that I have slightly better gear but my previous attempts were so so. Trees aoe heal is ok but if you're taking a lot of aoe dmg then it's easier for the moonkins to throw lb/rej on themselves and on the tank (this made the first boss easy in nexus compare to nightmare when she would toss you around).

As a side note.. I find my bear tank is way easier to heal than my paly (he currently has around 32% dodge/63% dmg reduction). I tried taking my pally/4 druids to AzjolNerub but he kept getting killed. With my bear I can cast 4 regrowths and that pretty much lasts for the entire pull. With pally I'd have to throw additional rej/lb. This is probably gear related.. at lower levels bears seem to preform better. Less spiky dmg and more health gives you a bigger buffer for heals.

[Owltoid]

I have been flirting around with the idea of a 5 druid group for PvE instead of my pally, shaman, 3x moonkin. My main motivation is just being bored out of my mind with the pally. Also, it would be tough to gear up 7 toons (5 druids, pally, shaman) with only 5 accounts and I'd likely have to resort to one druid tanking for PvE. I've planned to do 5x boomkins for PvP, but the question now is do I drop the pally & shaman and just start focusing on the two lowbie druids?

How easy is it to bear tank while doing a holy trinity (healer, DPS, tank)? Obviously I'll miss the pally buffs and shaman mana regen/reincarnation, but I actually enjoy druids which seems to be the point of playing games...

How viable is moonkin tanking in heroics if the moonkin is a JC, has full PvP gear for resil, and uses gems to get defense up more? If all other moonkins have the threat reduction, and strategically use shadowmeld, is it possible to hold aggro in moonkin form?

[Owltoid]

Screw it, I'm going to make an all moonkin group and see how far I can progress :) might as well try to be a little different!

[Starbuck_Jones]

I leveled 4 druids and a paladin. I only had 2 raf accounts so I did them in 2 groups of 3. I find it hard to believe that pre60 your not one-shotting stuff already with 5x starfire. 3x starfire almost did it and would if one of them critted. Also as many of the above have posted, use cloth. pre BC most of the leather is feral/hunter/rogue gear. Dress like a mage if your going to play like one lol. When you get to 40 or whatever pick up boomkin. Have your main be in boomkin form and the rest in just normal caster/healer mode. Dont take any aggro reduction talents with the boomkin and you shouldnt have any issue keeping aggro over the others and they can just heal over time you through anything.

I havent even trained any of the feral skills on my druids. Not even travel form. I quested the whole way to 60. Now im going back and fourth between questing and clearing an instance. Im in the process of finshing the quests in Terrokar forest and have one run of Slave pens to do for a quest and ill be 66 or higher when that is over. Then its off to Nagrand and takeing on the instances in terrorkar.

[daviddoran]

I have a weird setup for mine. RAF gifted one to 60, specced feral bear tank, and tanked to 68 with a team, then decided I wanted more druids, transferred a 53 druid from my old team on my old server, and made a new RAF account (old ones expired...) and dual boxed 2 druids, currently to 50. I had a team of 5 druids stuck at 27 when my RAF ran out (new job, killed my wow time) so I leveled with those druids when my raf druids were at 20, but they quickly outpaced them, and the old druids ended up at 36, while my RAF ones were 40... So I transferred a 36 druid to my RAF main acct, so I could gift levels to him (and the 53 one I had already transferred) once my RAF duo hits 60...

Yeah, very confusing. Then I have to do 3 more transfers to spread them to my main accounts.

I have 2 months left on my RAF account, so Im thinking of leveling a few more spare toons, like a warrior tank, and since I already have 3 paladins and 3 priests, I could get 2 more of each, and have some more teams to play with.

I plan on respeccing to balance once i hit 60 and get the transfers squared away.

Since im losing my bear tank from one of my teams, I am thinking of leveling without a decidated tank, and let my felguards do it, and using a resto shaman in the bear tanks place. He should be able to keep the felguards healed up...